Would Uniting Financial Services consider investing in international shares, and in particular Asian shares, to provide greater diversity?
International shares are an area in which Uniting Financial Services has invested in the past, when it made up a small percentage of our asset allocation and provided the benefit of being invested in an asset class that derives its return from outside of Australia. However, Uniting Financial Services divested from that asset class in February 2008 due to the increasing volatility in the market and the potential impact we foresaw it would have on the portfolio at that time. Investing in international shares also made adherence to our ethical investment principles difficult, as monitoring of international shares and related business activity is arduous.
